Throughout history, there are gold rushes—nexus events that catalyze great migrations of people ready to risk anything for the slim possibility of changing their fortunes.
But while a gold rush may produce a few winners, it is everything that surrounds a catalytic event that stabilizes, solidifies, and sustains a community. There are the loved ones that immigrants leave behind, who brave the separation and maintain connections to the homeland. There are the people who farm and feed the population of a new town or province, like the Chinese immigrants of 1921 who grew and distributed 90% of vegetables and 55% of potatoes in British Columbia. There are the people who open stores like herbal shops, providing spaces that beyond commerce also function as social spaces where people exchange news, cultural goods, and letters with loved ones. There are the people who build railways and run transit lines, operating networks of goods and trade. There are the people who send money home and maintain cultural and familial ties across oceans, all while cultivating community in the new places they call home.
My arch design, Currents, is a response to the events that catalyzed and then solidified the presence of Chinese people in Burnaby and British Columbia. The golden colour of the arch’s exterior alludes to the nexus event of Chinese migration in pursuit of Gold Mountain. But close up, the arch displays an interwoven pattern of Chinese foods and medicines, produce that might not have been what they sold to European settlers, but that sustained and solidified Chinese Canadian identity in a new home.
Other featured artists are: Faria Faroz, Laara Cerman, Karl Hipol, and Chrystal Sparrow
